By Joe Bendel. There are 102 stars on the memorial wall at CIA headquarters in Langley. Each one signifies an officer who died in the line of duty. In their latest film, director Joe Wright and screenwriters Seth Lochhead and David Farr add at least eight stars to their ranks, inviting the audience to give a bloodthirsty cheer for each and every execution. Hollywood has come a long way since we first met James Bond’s CIA colleague Felix Leiter, but it is difficult to think of a film more hostile to the men and women who serve in America’s intelligence services than Wright’s Hanna, which opens widely today.
Hanna was developed by the Agency to be a super-killer. However, when the program was canceled, vampy agent Marisa Wiegler was charged with disposing of the evidence—and you know what that means. Somehow though, Hanna’s presumed father Erik was able to whisk her away to a remote Finnish hideaway, where he continues her training, relentlessly attacking her like a fatherly version of Inspector Clouseau’s man-servant Cato.
When Hanna decides she is ready to face Wiegler, she activates Erik’s clunky CIA signal beacon, a piece of hardware perhaps developed by the same company that produces self-destruct switches for super villains’ lairs. (This seems like an oddly passive strategy, considering Hanna and Erik spend about eighteen hours of the day stalking wild game or each other.)
Extracted simply so she can escape again, Hanna cuts through at least eight CIA personnel and a number of freelance contractors on her way to rendezvousing Erik. If that were not disturbing enough, dear old Erik also kills two completely innocent German cops, though their deaths are kept antiseptically off-screen.
As Hanna, Saorise Ronan is quite a credible young action star and can be excused for not fully appreciating the film’s ideological implications. For his part, Eric (with a “c”) Bana mostly broods sullenly as Erik (with a “k”). However,Cate Blanchett’s Wiegler looks and sounds like a stand-up comic’s bad impression of the late Ann Richards. At least she is allowed a personality. The rest of the film’s CIA personnel and associates are colorlessly interchangeable—mere meat for Hanna’s grinder, except for one conspicuously “swishy” contractor, a bizarre exercise stereotyping for this day and age.
To give due credit, Wright stages some energetic action sequences. Unfortunately, this also makes the film more effective as propaganda. It is only too easy to picture Hanna playing for months in countries across the Mideast eager to indulge in some cheap anti-Americanism. Indeed, following the revelation that YouTube clips of Brian De Palma’s anti-Iraq broadside Redacted helped spur the fatal shooting of two American servicemen at the Frankfurt airport, a film like Hanna can no longer be viewed in an ethical vacuum.
Frankly, Wright, Bana, Blanchett, and the rest of the grown-ups behind the film should be asked directly how they would explain their film to the family of CIA officer Johnny Michael Spann, the first official American casualty in Afghanistan – killed by duplicitous Taliban terrorists. What would they say to the family of William Buckley, the CIA Beirut station chief brutally tortured and murdered by Hezbollah? What would they say to the friends and family of anyone of the fallen 102?
Indeed, Hanna has serious issues far beyond its gaping logical holes and clunky performances. It is deeply cynical and profoundly disrespectful of the American intelligence officers who risk their lives on behalf of their country. Entirely problematic, Hanna should be avoided when it opens today.
Posted on April 8th, 2011 at 10:41am.
Bummer….But I had a feeling it was going to go in that direction. I suppose I’m naive to think that Hollywood would actually try to be original. If this movie does well I suppose We can expect two decades of endless television spin offs. By the way, this is also the same director that did Atonement. My reaction to the ending of that movie?!….”is that it!?” She made it ALL up!?
WE are the enemy. WE are the enemy. WE are the enemy. WE are the enemy. WE are the enemy. WE are the enemy. WE are the enemy. WE are the enemy. WE are the enemy. WE are the enemy. We are the enemy.
So, what is it, do you think, that all these films are trying to tell us, exactly?
Whatever happened to SPECTRE? I miss SPECTRE.
No problem. Just make it a fascist organization whose base of operations in Texas – and give Blofeld a southern drawl.
= Billion Dollar Brain
That Hollywood thinks that a concept they’ve been kicking around since about 1968 is still fresh and interesting?
This is where having so few conservative movie makers leads to creative stagnation. The genre is beyond ripe for some sharp, well done parodies. David Zucker, are you listening?
Hear, hear. I would love to see a Bourne send-up where the Matt Damon character is being attacked by wholesome looking, All-American soldiers, Boy Scouts, little girls with stuffed animals, grannies with walkers, stereotyped Israeli Mossad agents, etc. while attractive, “misunderstood” Palestinian terrorists come to his aid.
I’m sorry but I have to strongly disagree with this review. I found this movie to be a terrifically intense and exciting action-thriller that I will definitely see again.
Your point about respect for America’s intelligence services is well-taken. I certainly wish they were shown more respect and portrayed heroically in Hollywood movies as well. Aside from the Jack Ryan movies, I can’t think of any where that is the case. But I don’t think this movie is really attempting to attack the CIA or America, it’s simply using a CIA agent as a convenient bad guy. If it was really out to attack, it could have done a much more thorough job, but aside from a reference to Langley and a single mention of American national security by a suspect source, these issues do not come up at all, and I don’t think they even use the word “CIA” in the film. The CIA is just a convenient shadowy government spy agency to use, and has been since the ’70s. The public enjoys stories of spies and assassins, and made-up stories about the CIA are the easiest way to tell these stories. Actually, the (liberal) reviewer at The Playlist complained (absurdly) that the film doesn’t develop its political and ideological ideas well enough, so it doesn’t really work as an indictment of the military-industrial complex. Marisa Wiegler is pretty clearly shown to be a villain, a rogue CIA operative/higher-up who takes matters into her own hands and hires grunts to do dirty work that would be against CIA rules. The movie is not even really an indictment of agency policy–the whole super-soldier subplot also seems to have been a below-the-radar project of hers that she wants to keep under wraps and hide from superiors. So what we have here is an evil spy chief working on her own, not actual American policy-makers or government officials portrayed as villains because of Middle East policy or something.
But aside from ideological grounds, where you have a legitimate point, I just disagree with the assessment of the film in general. You say there are plot holes but you don’t identify any, and you criticize the performances as wooden when the only actor who might qualify is Eric Bana, and he is at least intense and compelling, if undeveloped. Saoirse Ronan is incredible, completely believable and thrilling to watch, and Cate Blanchett matches her in evil. I don’t think the film is meant to be a celebration of killing or bloodthirstiness, nor do I think Hanna or Erik are meant to be heroes. They are somewhat sympathetic, but certainly not good guys, Erik especially is pretty much evil. But then movies have always been fascinated with unpleasant underworld characters, assassins, and criminals, and portraying them as protagonists is nothing new. With sympathize with them not because they are good or innocent but because they are human and we see and feel what they do. I think Hanna is an especially fascinating character because she is both a cold-blooded killer and a child discovering the world for the first time. That makes her hard to fit into conventional definitions of good guy and bad guy, but that’s part of the fascination.
Sorry if this came off as a rant, I mean it as a respectful disagreement. I really liked the film, and just don’t see your arguments as finally compelling against it.
Will we ever see a film like this that takes on Islamic Terrorism? Maybe a girl’s mother and family and friends are killed in a terrorist attack on a wedding party and the terrorists tell her and her father to stop their selfish whining and blame Israel and the US. Instead, they go into training…
Hollywood filmmakers can pay for bodyguards and lawyers for themselves and their families. If they don’t make movies that take on Islamism, who can, or will? And why don’t they?
Granted, they wouldn’t win any Oscars, but they would make a ton of money. Which is what we’re told is all Hollywood cares about when we point out the Leftist bias of Hollywood. Right…
C/D, if you feel this way, you really should check out a film we’ve talked about on many occasions here at LFM called Four Lions. I can’t recommend the film enough. You can purchase it here:
http://astore.amazon.com/libefilmmaga-20/detail/B004H83IKA
TIME Magazine rated it one of the Top 10 movies of 2010, and it was a big hit at Sundance.
I will second both of these comments. I may think you’re too hard on Hanna, but it would be great to see more movies about fighting actual terrorists. Plus, Four Lions is brilliant and subversive and definitely one of the best films of the year. But it’s not an America-loving action movie.